Meeting Minutes

I have decided to create a post that has the links to my meeting minutes with my Mentor Teacher (Greg Wong). These meetings take place every Wednesday morning and afternoon. 

2021-2022

Syndicate meetings take place once a week on a Tuesday. These meetings are clearly recorded and follow the same structure as my meeting minutes with my MT. The important links are placed at the top and there is a table of contents that makes it simple to find the week and topics.

Having the actions placed to the side makes it easy to follow and see what needs to be acted upon. Having notes in the middle that are clearly separated allows for simple clear understanding and ensures everyone is on the same page.

Reflection for this Year

The first few weeks of this year have been very interesting. With Covid cases on the rise we have been having to adapt our lessons. I started off with 29 learners in my class and we are now having between 10-14 turning up each day from the remaining 26 students.

The Senior Syndicate had a meeting regarding how we feel this year has gone so far. There were very similar situations in each class and we all agreed that after lunch time the learners shut off and find it hard to concentrate. This was an interesting observation for all classes as we didn't experience this prior to lockdown last year.

Below are some of the observations I have made so far this year:

• It felt daunting coming back to school

• Students so much lower academically than I thought they would be 

• Students finding rules harder eg: masks

• Weird vibe - not as many behavioural things as you cant hide so cant get away with it.

• It's very different at the moment compared to two weeks ago - not happy, it's not sad, it's not negative or positive - just flat.

• Students want structure not busy work

• Little parent communication - if they are here the parents must be ok with them being here - and then the parents not engaging.

• Some parents are very cautious in regards to sending students to school

• Lots of visual examples so students can ‘see’ the learning.

• Introducing competition - task, challenge, super challenge to motivate

• Challenges:

• Attendance

• Lack of ability 

• Lack of chrome book

• Lack of digital knowledge and previous students have forgotten.

• After lunch class is flat

• Relationship building is a challenge as friends aren't here and we might not be seeing that

Term 4 in Lockdown

The past few weeks have been the start of Term 4. We are now into week 4 and have been in lockdown for 12 weeks. My class has been going well and while some of the students have dropped off, we are still having a large amount of contributions to our online Google Meets. My students love to have a chat and interact with their friends during this time which is great to see as they are still able to maintain friendships with others. 

I have incorporated "Friday Fundays" into my online programme. This is gaining more engagement from students as we do riddles, creative tasks and fun activities every Friday. We also do daily Kahoot challenges/competitions which has been a big hit. I asked what type of quizzes they'd like to do and most answers were surrounded around movies, logos and Christmas. 

Each day we take a class photo of everyone who attended the Google Meet. This is then sent to them in an email and they are able to put these on their blogs. At the end of each email I make sure to include the amount of days until Christmas. My class loves this as each day we speak about how close we are to Christmas and they discuss what they are looking forward to. I do this to bring a more positive aspect to the current situation in Auckland.

I have also shared a few good pieces of news with the students and they absolutely love to hear this. For example I let them know that we are adding a puppy to our family at the end of the year and showed them a photo. They loved hearing about this and I received a few emails of their puppy name choices which was very lovely to see.

I can't wait to get back to school once we are able to. My class is excited also as they miss school at the moment.

Week 5-7 Reflection

 Week 5 was my first full week of teaching and Google Meets. I met my class every day from 9:30-9:50 to explain their daily tasks and see how everyone was. We started with about 4 students and by Friday we saw a few more during our daily meets. 

The students loved having Google Meets every morning as it gave them an opportunity to their friends and myself face-to-face. They were all very happy to see their friends and myself which was lovely to see.

After week 5 I made a few changes to my online teaching. One of the main things I changed was only having whole class Google Meets on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I set aside Tuesday and Thursday as optional Google Meets for those who needed extra help. So far I have a good amount of learners attending for extra help. This has given them an opportunity to ask any questions and allows us to talk through the work in more detail if needed. This has meant I've received a lot more completed work throughout the week which is great.

I also am opening the Meet early at 9:20am to allow the students to have a chance to chat and communicate face-to-face with their peers. More learners have been attending earlier in order to talk with their friends which is great.

Another change I have made is playing a game at the start of everyone Google Meet. I have included a Kahoot for the start of every Meet. This has gained a lot of interest and increased the amount of learners attending. We have made it a daily competition to win the Kahoot which they love.

So far, distance learning is going extremely well. I am enjoying my daily Google Meets and emails with the students.

Lockdown Reflection

It was announced that we were going into a Level 4 Lockdown on Tuesday afternoon. This came as a sudden shock but was also inevitable due to the state of the rest of the world. I had only gone through one previous Lockdown and I started to become anxious once again. 

It was decided that we would continue with the work we had started in for the week and this would allow the teachers time to get themselves organised for Distance Learning. The links to continue this work was placed on a new set of slides called Distance Learning. 

During the next few days I had a lot of support from my team leader. She walked me through how to work Google Meet and what to say. This run through made me feel a lot more confident when it came around to Monday morning.

I felt as though I was a lot more prepared for this Level 4 Lockdown than I was previously due to going through it already and the persistent support from my team leader.

Here are the lockdown slides for my class.

  

Observations

Last week I had two observations for maths and reading. These went very well and I am so proud with the results. I was observed for Manaiakalani data, BT and appraisal observations. 

These were my first formal observations for this year and while I was very nervous, I just taught how I usually do. This went well and all of my students were engaged in their work and were able to answer questions. I do still need to work on incorporating learning intentions into the lesson and constantly reverting back to these. This way I am able to understand what I need to teach and the students are aware of what they need to focus on for the lesson.

Maths Lesson Reflection

During the first week of school we had a maths PD facilitated by Marie Hirst. She had some incredible ideas and the one that stuck out the most to me was her take on a statistical investigation. Due to this I chose to incorporate this into my teaching. This week we started the class wide statistical investigation based around getting to know the students better. 

The first step was to split Post-It notes into quarters using a pen. From there four questions could be asked and the answers were recorded by students in the correct box on their paper. This was a very simple yet effective technique to engage my class. They thoroughly enjoyed having a hands-on task to complete.

The students then stuck these on the whiteboard to view everyone's answers. A class discussion brought out very useful and interesting conversations about their observations. The entire class engaged with the task and were participating in these rich conversations. I used a few talk points to keep the discussion flowing and to get more students involved. Although these conversations were student led which was fantastic to see. This was very successful as others would add on to individual's ideas.

This was my most successful lesson so far and the students really enjoyed themselves and have started to enjoy maths more. This will be taught over a few weeks and eventually they will do their own group investigation.

Here is a photo of the way in which they recorded their answers.

Lockdown Teaching Reflection

In the past week Auckland went into a Level 3 Lockdown. This was a shock as it was only my third week teaching. I was extremely nervous going into it but with the help of my tutor teacher and team leader I was able to continue with online teaching. 

Due to this sudden lockdown, many of my students didn't have their Chromebooks. There were a few students engaging in their online learning and we had multiple accounts of communication through email. I had to use the junior way of online teaching as a result of this. This included setting simple yet effective tasks that they were able to do using materials from around the house. Each morning I uploaded a video to the slides which was both a daily check in and an introduction to the day's work.

Myself and my tutor teacher had daily check ins via Google Hangout. This helped a lot as I was able to help with the setup of student blogs and other daily tasks. The entire senior team was very helpful and supportive during this lockdown and as a result I was able to gain more knowledge and confidence around online teaching.

Lockdown slides